Marshall Solutions and Ubisense announced on Novemember 28th 2007, the setting up of an aerospace production RTLS competence centre in Cambridge,UK. The centre is designed to showcase the benefits which Real Time Location Systems (RTLS) can bring to the production environment.

Marshall Solutions parent company, Marshall Aerospace, is the UK's leading independent aerospace contractor. Marshalls are already using Ubisesnse Series 7000 RLTS system to track test and manufacturing equipment used in the manufacture of aircraft fuel tanks in 1.2 million square feet of hangar space. Marshalls have seen benefits in terms of cost reduction, manpower savings, reductions in tool loss, and safety improvements from using RTLS.

"We are very excited about this development," stated Peter Hiscocks, CEO of Marshall Solutions. "RTLS has improved the efficiency of our manufacturing operations and we know that this technology has applications across the aerospace manufacturing, MRO and airports businesses. We will use our RTLS system to demonstrate to other potential customers the effectiveness of this approach and the types of savings that they can achieve."

The RTLS centre will be used to create more optimized production processes and provide Marshall's customers with the opportunity to share their vision of Aerospace Manufacturing in the future.

I have only just written an article about the new GS1 RFID Centre, in which I wasn't very complimentary (Oh no! Not another UK RFID Test Centre!). More about that later in a future article based on an interview with David Lyons of GS1 that I have had recently. Is this good for the industry? Well one could say anything that demonstrates how RFID can assist business in reducing costs is a good thing. What makes this centre interesting are the companies involved. I have just written an article about the Ubisense product (Ultra-Wide Band RTLS - the Ubisense way). If you are in Aerospace and work with Marshalls, then this is something of real benefit. The other good point, like GS1's centre, is that it is not a showcase centre but a real product type environment.

Any Bloor Research member interested in knowing more about Ubisense, may be interested in looking at the Product Evaluation just completed—it should be posted in the next couple of weeks.